If you’re looking for good reading material to occupy your thoughts during the next dreary day, I wholeheartedly recommend Richard Brookhiser’s new book, What Would The Founders Do? Our Questions, Their Answers (Basic Books, 2006).
I’m sure I had a silly smirk on my face as I closed the book’s back cover a few moments ago. Informative and thought-provoking, the book is also funny.
Here’s the premise: Brookhiser — an author of multiple profiles of the Founders — often takes questions from book-tour audiences that seek to relate 18th century American Founder wisdom to early 21st century issues.
The Founders said nothing directly about WMD, campaign-finance reform, or drilling in ANWR. But that doesn’t stop Brookhiser from drawing inferences from the historical evidence.
It’s not as dry as my previous sentence suggests. Consider the opening paragraph in a section called “How would the Founders have fought the war on drugs?”:
Every time I talk about George Washington to an audience that is younger than members of AARP, I get the following question: did Washington grow hemp at Mount Vernon? This irrepressible query is asked by potheads, who know the answer is yes, and want me to say so publicly.
He then proceeds to a (slightly) more serious discussion of the impact of opium and booze in the Founders’ day, including Washington’s substantial efforts to liquor up voters in his first campaign for the Virginia House of Burgesses.
Consider also Brookhiser’s take on the question “What would the founders think about partisanship?”:
Sick of attack ads, spinning, mindless partisanship? The founders hated it as much as you do. They also invented it.
Beyond the humor, the best part of the book is Brookhiser’s refusal to answer most of the questions he poses. The Founders had drastically different responses to key political questions of their day, and Brookhiser notes those conflicts frequently within his narrative.
Rather than a set of answers, the book offers us the principles the Founders employed and the practicalities they accepted as they built this republic. Let’s hope the discerning authors of the 23rd century will find an equally valuable set of facts and philosophies from our times.
